Kostas Kenderis winning at the 2002 European Championships (© Getty Images)
10 June 2004Athens, GreeceThe Athens Olympic stadium opened this morning with the preliminaries of the first day of the Greek national championships.
All the competitions will take place into the stadium (track and field events), but only about 8000 seats are available for the spectators at the moment.
But, all the other infrastructure in the stadium (the dressing rooms, etc) are in normal operation.
Both the Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis and the Leader of the Opposition George Papandreou attended the championships, along with the President of "Athens 2004" Mrs Gianna Angelopoulos and the IAAF Council Member Mr. Minos Kyriakou.
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First day's Competition
The best Greek National Championships of the last years started in the morning in the renovated Olympic Stadium of Athens, with the participation of most top Greek stars.
Olympic 200m champion Kostas Kenteris ran the 100m final in 10.18, after a false start marked the opening of one of his most important seasons. Now he plans to run the 200m in the European Cup next week.
Katerina Thanou ran 11.22 in her first race of the year and seems to have overcome the injuries she faced during last winter.
The women's Discus throw competion finally produced a national record for Greece. The European Champion and Paris' bronze medallist Katerina Voggoli, sent the Discus to 67.72m to take the record, and to set a world leading mark. Anastassia Kelesidou, who had a throw at 63.81m in the morning qualification round, withdrew from the final because of an injury during warm-up.
The winners of the other events so far, are Louis Tsatoumas in the Long Jump with 7.94m, Naim Akrut in the 3000m Steeplechase with 8.52.81, Yannoula Kafetzi in the women's Long Jump with 6.65m and Maria Protopapa in the women's 5000m with 16.25.47
Full results can be found at www.athletix.org
